Abstract

The letter reports experimental data to demonstrate magnetic force microscopy(MFM) with sub-10-nm resolution under ambient conditions. To achieve this record high resolution, multidomain states in a nanomagnetic probe were controlled. Two demagnetized (multidomain) FePt (45/55) films sputtered on a silicon probe and separated by an 8 nm thick MgO layer were further annealed at temperature of to trigger the high-anisotropy phase. A field of above 2 T was applied to drive the probes into a saturated “single-domain” state. The multidomain probes were equivalently compared with state-of-the-art conventional MFM probes via comparative imaging of benchmark magnetic recording disks.

Received 20 August 2008Accepted 06 November 2008Published online 21 November 2008

Acknowledgments:

The authors would like to acknowledge research grants from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense MicroElectronics Activity (DMEA), particularly Award No. H94003-07-2-0703, and several other grants by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and National Science Foundation (NSF), particularly Award No. 0712445. The authors also acknowledge the invaluable support from Bin Lu of Seagate Technology and William Cain of Western Digital Corporation who continuously provided industry reference recording heads and media necessary for this study.